Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)(97)

She’d also taken the Daylighters pin from her uniform collar and was wearing it on the shirt.

“Camouflage,” she said, when Claire pointed at it. She opened the doors. “We’ll be walking from here on in. Shane, you’re familiar with this.” She tossed him the shotgun from the rack in front. “Claire—take the Taser.”

“What about you?”

Hannah slipped her sidearm into a pancake holster at the small of her back, and flipped the shirt down over it.

“Unless it’s take-your-shotgun-to-work day, I’m going to get noticed,” Shane said. “Not that it isn’t a great late birthday present, though.”

Hannah looked around the other stores on the block, and grinned. “I can fix that.”

And she did.

? ? ?

“I hate this,” Shane complained, and sneezed. Turned out he was allergic to roses. And he was carrying a thick bundle of them to conceal the shotgun. It was kind of bizarrely clever, because nobody thought a guy carrying roses was dangerous in the least, did they? Especially one who was sneezing.

Claire could tell from how hard he was gritting his teeth that he really did hate it. A lot.

They walked quickly but calmly the short distance to Founder’s Square. Hannah must have thought ahead, because they went to one of the side entrances; it was guarded by a police officer, but as Hannah got closer, she locked stares with the woman and said, “Get on the right side, Gretchen. Semper Fi.”

Gretchen—a trim woman with thick white-blond hair—nodded, gave them all a quick glance, and swung the gate open. “I never saw you, boss,” she told Hannah.

“Affirmative.”

And then they were in, approaching from the side. There was a school choir onstage, singing something that it took Claire a moment to realize was “Here Comes the Sun.” They weren’t very good.

“That’s a little on the nose,” Shane said. “I think maybe ‘Black Hole Sun’ might be more appropriate.”

He was right, of course. The audience Fallon had gathered, though, seemed entranced; they were swaying to the music, holding hands, looking for all the world like they were having a religious experience.

Amelie, Oliver, and Morley were still motionless on the stage, blistering and steaming in the sun. It must have been agonizing, waiting for their chance. Claire wondered why they hadn’t done it already, but then she realized they were waiting for word that the vampires in the mall had been rescued.

It was up to her, and Shane, to let them know.

She spotted Eve and Michael. They were sitting in chairs onstage next to Fallon, pretty much held there by the two Daylighter guards standing behind them. Maybe that was another reason why Amelie hadn’t moved; Eve and Michael would be the first in danger if she did.

The choir was still singing when the vampires began to arrive at Founder’s Square.

Some were covered by blankets, coats, whatever they’d been able to scavenge along the way from the mall. Some, the older ones, had made do with a hat or some kind of cap. They came over the walls in a silent stream, landing quietly in the bushes and moving forward to gather at the edges of the crowd. It was done very calmly. Nobody threatened. Nobody attacked.

Then someone in the crowd must have noticed that a vampire was standing right beside him. He yelled, and a flurry of confusion erupted. People began drawing back, flinching from the sudden appearance of the bogeymen all around them . . . and as their false sense of security shattered into chaos, and the crowd began to stampede in all directions.

Faith in the sunlight wasn’t enough in the face of real danger, apparently.

The choir was still singing, but it was falling apart, too, and Fallon shoved through them to get to the microphone. “Don’t run!” he shouted, and his voice rang out over the square, echoing back from the buildings with their fluttering banners. “Don’t run from them! Stand up to them! Fight for your town. You have the advantage—they are few, and they are weak. Take Morganville back!”

“Go,” Hannah said. “Get Michael and Eve out of there! I need to make sure nobody does anything stupid.” She was already gone, running flat out for two of her own cops, one of whom was drawing his sidearm but not quite sure where to aim it.

Shane grabbed Claire’s arm and towed her quickly toward the stage. That wasn’t easy, because a lot of the crowd was running in that direction, as if Fallon’s presence was somehow going to protect them from about vampires gathering on the other side of the folding chairs. Fallon was right—the humans outnumbered them. But the fear of vampires was so ingrained that it didn’t seem to be making a difference.

Myrnin was in front of the rank of vampires, Claire saw, but he didn’t move forward. He held up his hand, and the others stayed behind him, ready to move. She’d seen them in army mode before, fighting the draug, but it was still eerie and terrifying, knowing how much hell they could unleash.

“Myrnin,” Fallon said. His voice held so much, just in saying the name—so much anger, and so much pain. “Come to mourn your fallen?”

“This doesn’t have to end this way,” Myrnin said. “I have no quarrel with you, Rhys. I never have.”

“You destroyed my life, spider. You preyed upon me and blackened my soul, and it took me hundreds of years to claw my way back to the light. Well, I’ve done it. And now I’m going to drag you into the light, too.”